31 January 2011

Quick health update: I officially have "post-nasal nastiness," which may or may not have caused a bronchitis, which is to say that she (the nurse practitioner that I saw) isn't as convinced as I am that I have bronchitis, although she admitted it's a possibility, and she further admitted that the post-nasal nastiness irritates the bronchials and causes the coughing. How this isn't a bronchitis, I'm unsure, but whatev.

Anyway, she gave me a magic cough medication that she assured me will knock me out (YES! I get to sleep! FINALLY!), and told me to only take it at bedtime. I told her I'm unemployed and I intend to take it all day so I can sleep. She then questioned me thoroughly about whether I have children, dogs that need walking, etc., which I thought was funny. I assured her I have only a cat and we can both sleep the day away together. I promised the health update would be quick, so that's all for now. More tomorrow.

So - the fingerless mitts. The pattern (as I said earlier) is called Fire & Ice, and it's a free Ravelry download. I was struck by all the cables. I liked how there was one cabling pattern on the backside of the hand and another cabling pattern on the palm and forearm. I also liked that the pattern came with both a charted version and written instructions, as I love charts.

Of course, this proved to be one exception where I ended up following the written instructions. One thing that was nice about this pattern was that you could choose to do the "short" version or the "long" version. The short version is purported to be 8" long and the long version is supposed to be 13-14" long. Then, of course, you can choose to do a small, medium, or large, depending on your hand size. It's kind of like a "choose your own adventure" of knitting.

Overall, I liked this pattern. It was well-written, and (like I said) I ended up following the written directions rather than the chart. The chart didn't use conventional notations, and thus it ended up being a little confusing. Also, because of the "choose your own adventure" nature of the pattern, you ended up jumping around in the pattern, which is not noted in the chart (which is also understandable because it would clutter up the chart quite a bit). So it just ended up being easier to follow the written instructions.

I did find it annoying a couple of times when it told me to "Repeat Row 15" when the directions for row 15 were two pages ago. Would it have killed the designer to have copied and pasted the directions? I'm busying cabling!

The yarn I used was a wonderful cashmere, baby alpaca, merino blend. It's called Lana Vida, and this is the Hannah line, which is a worsted weight yarn. It's the charcoal colourway, which is a wonderful dark grey. It's soft and smooshy, and for you Philly locals, Loop has lots of it in several other colours.